Backstory: Recently, two brothers who were trying to obtain a pre-approval to purchase a two-family house contacted me. They had been unsuccessful in obtaining a loan in their previous three attempts at a local bank and with two large mortgage lenders. Their credit was good but there were questions about the younger brother’s income.

He was attending a local college part-time while working full- and part-time jobs. Because they needed the income from both of his jobs to qualify at the amount they needed to purchase the home in the area where they wanted to live, they were not being approved.

In 2017, the younger brother didn’t work his part-time job at all. Because the guidelines for a conventional mortgage requires a borrower to work a part-time job for two years without interruption, the income from his part-time job would need to be excluded, resulting in them qualifying for much less than they needed.

During the conversation with the younger brother, I asked him about his part-time job history prior to 2017. He stated he had worked a part-time job from 2013 until 2017. In 2017, he had been accepted into an IT program at another local college and in order to get his required course load in, he decided in 2017, he would take a full course load as a full-time student.

He needed to keep working his full-time job but would not have time to manage his part-time job with additional classes and the workload that came with them.

At the end of the fall semester starting in February, he was able to reduce his load again and immediately started working at his part-time job again.

I requested a copy of his transcripts for 2017 and his current course load. With this, I was able to provide a detailed explanation of his work history.

We were also able to show the course load in 2017 versus his current course load and support his explanation with supporting documentation to show his long history of working a part-time job. We also showed his reason for not working one in 2017, plus proved his immediate return to working a part-time job when his college work went back to a part-time status.

With this, I was able to demonstrate the continuation of part-time income was likely and could be expected to persist in the future; allowing them to qualify at the higher amount needed to purchase a two-family home in the area where they wanted to live.